Ed.L.D. Student Research Aids NACA Expansion Plans

Ever since Executive Director Kara Bobroff founded the Native American Community Academy (NACA), a middle school/high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she dreamed of one day expanding.

“It’s been a dream for a long time. After NACA started showing initial results with students and our community partners, the discussion over how to expand the reach of our best practices began,” Bobroff says of the tuition-free public charter school that uniquely blends Native American traditions with college preparatory education. “There are too few examples of innovation, let alone excellence in Native communities and we believe the NACA network can help lead that change.”

Now, with the help of HGSE students, Bobroff is getting closer to making that dream a reality.

Ed.L.D. cohort IV student Landon Mascareñaz, who had previously worked with the charter school as an executive director at Teach For America in New Mexico, thought the project of NACA’s expansion would be a perfect fit the yearlong Ed.L.D. course, The Workplace Lab for System Level Leaders. The course, taught by Professor Deborah Jewell-Sherman, provides an opportunity for students to combine action and reflection, challenge their assumptions about leadership and improvement, and integrate and deepen their learning across the Ed.L.D. core curriculum.

“It’s rare that you get to work on a start-up in a Native American community that is also rural,” Mascareñaz says.

Jewell-Sherman agrees. “HGSE seeks to impact the education sector through its focus on research, policy, and practice,” she says. “In the Ed.L.D. first-year curriculum, we seek opportunities to operationalize students’ knowledge and commitment by having them work on significant problems of practice in the real world. The expansion of NACA gave a Workplace Lab team the opportunity to collaborate on the design of leadership development strategies for its growing school network.”

For her part, Bobroff understands the importance of seeking outside perspectives on the expansion. “We have talked and spoken with many stakeholders in New Mexico and in Native circles around the country,” she says. “We also wanted to bring in a national perspective and the Ed.L.D. students came from all sorts of backgrounds that could inform how we could move forward.”

Ed.L.D. students Daniela Lewy, Francis Yasharian, Jonathon Skolnick, Katherine Carter, and Seng Kao eagerly signed on to the NACA project. “We jumped at this opportunity,” Lewy said, explaining that Native American education was a topic they hadn’t heard a lot about and were eager to learn more. For three weeks, the students worked together using Professor Mark Moore’s strategic triangle — which entails focusing on an organizations key areas (public value, sources of legitimacy and support, and operational capacity) before taking a particular course of action — to understand the context of NACA and draw recommendations on ways to expand the network. While they worked on the project, the students got news that they’d have an opportunity to present to Bobroff and her NACA colleagues in person.

During an hour-long meeting on the Ed School campus, the students presented their ideas on how to expand the network without losing the success NACA already has obtained. Looking at other charter networks like Big Picture, KIPP, Communities in Schools, Expeditionary Learning, Green Dot, and Summit Schools, they learned more about what these places had done to grow well. Among the successes of these schools were maintaining the core values and design principles, leadership participation, branding, network report cards, and set start-up processes for new schools. Like NACA’s “Wellness Wheel” – a tool for students, staff, and the community to articulate their perceptions, goals, and assessments surrounding their health – the Ed.L.D. students recommended integrating the assessment approach into the new network. The wheel can offer an assessment tool used annually at each school that becomes part of the network.

Bobroff, who is beginning to hire staff and fellows including Michael Dabrieo, Ed.M.’14, for this summer’s launch of the network, plans to use the Ed.L.D. students’ research. “The work produced by the students here will be helpful in generating perspective, ideas, and materials for the staff and fellows to start in a strong place,” she says.

Jewell-Sherman notes how significant a collaborative learning opportunity can be for the students. “The synergy resulting from the work of a former member of the Principals Center, a member of Cohort III, and a team from Cohort IV was powerful, and the presentation made to NACA will be used to chart its future. That is powerful,” Jewell-Sherman says. “Learning through doing and making a contribution to the learning and teaching of our nation’s most vulnerable students is a hallmark of the work done in the Workplace Lab and I couldn’t be prouder of our students.”

Ever since Executive Director Kara Bobroff founded the Native American Community Academy (NACA), a middle school/high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she dreamed of one day expanding.

“It’s been a dream for a long time. After NACA started showing initial results with students and our community partners, the discussion over how to expand the reach of our best practices began,” Bobroff says of the tuition-free public charter school that uniquely blends Native American traditions with college preparatory education. “There are too few examples of innovation, let alone excellence in Native communities and we believe the NACA network can help lead that change.”

Now, with the help of HGSE students, Bobroff is getting closer to making that dream a reality.

Ed.L.D. cohort IV student Landon Mascareñaz, who had previously worked with the charter school as an executive director at Teach For America in New Mexico, thought the project of NACA’s expansion would be a perfect fit the yearlong Ed.L.D. course, The Workplace Lab for System Level Leaders. The course, taught by Professor Deborah Jewell-Sherman, provides an opportunity for students to combine action and reflection, challenge their assumptions about leadership and improvement, and integrate and deepen their learning across the Ed.L.D. core curriculum.

“It’s rare that you get to work on a start-up in a Native American community that is also rural,” Mascareñaz says.

Jewell-Sherman agrees. “HGSE seeks to impact the education sector through its focus on research, policy, and practice,” she says. “In the Ed.L.D. first-year curriculum, we seek opportunities to operationalize students’ knowledge and commitment by having them work on significant problems of practice in the real world. The expansion of NACA gave a Workplace Lab team the opportunity to collaborate on the design of leadership development strategies for its growing school network.”

For her part, Bobroff understands the importance of seeking outside perspectives on the expansion. “We have talked and spoken with many stakeholders in New Mexico and in Native circles around the country,” she says. “We also wanted to bring in a national perspective and the Ed.L.D. students came from all sorts of backgrounds that could inform how we could move forward.”

Ed.L.D. students Daniela Lewy, Francis Yasharian, Jonathon Skolnick, Katherine Carter, and Seng Kao eagerly signed on to the NACA project. “We jumped at this opportunity,” Lewy said, explaining that Native American education was a topic they hadn’t heard a lot about and were eager to learn more. For three weeks, the students worked together using Professor Mark Moore’s strategic triangle — which entails focusing on an organizations key areas (public value, sources of legitimacy and support, and operational capacity) before taking a particular course of action — to understand the context of NACA and draw recommendations on ways to expand the network. While they worked on the project, the students got news that they’d have an opportunity to present to Bobroff and her NACA colleagues in person.

During an hour-long meeting on the Ed School campus, the students presented their ideas on how to expand the network without losing the success NACA already has obtained. Looking at other charter networks like Big Picture, KIPP, Communities in Schools, Expeditionary Learning, Green Dot, and Summit Schools, they learned more about what these places had done to grow well. Among the successes of these schools were maintaining the core values and design principles, leadership participation, branding, network report cards, and set start-up processes for new schools. Like NACA’s “Wellness Wheel” – a tool for students, staff, and the community to articulate their perceptions, goals, and assessments surrounding their health – the Ed.L.D. students recommended integrating the assessment approach into the new network. The wheel can offer an assessment tool used annually at each school that becomes part of the network.

Bobroff, who is beginning to hire staff and fellows including Michael Dabrieo, Ed.M.’14, for this summer’s launch of the network, plans to use the Ed.L.D. students’ research. “The work produced by the students here will be helpful in generating perspective, ideas, and materials for the staff and fellows to start in a strong place,” she says.

Jewell-Sherman notes how significant a collaborative learning opportunity can be for the students. “The synergy resulting from the work of a former member of the Principals Center, a member of Cohort III, and a team from Cohort IV was powerful, and the presentation made to NACA will be used to chart its future. That is powerful,” Jewell-Sherman says. “Learning through doing and making a contribution to the learning and teaching of our nation’s most vulnerable students is a hallmark of the work done in the Workplace Lab and I couldn’t be prouder of our students.”